3 ms·

There's a difference between pools not accepting txs in their mempool, and pools refusing to build on other miners' blocks that contain them. Pools are beginnin

by tromp 6y ago

There's a difference between pools not accepting txs in their mempool, and pools refusing to build on other miners' blocks that contain them. Pools are beginning to do the former (which doesn't cost them), not the latter (which would cost them dearly). Only if a majority of hashpower does the latter will censoring be effective (and then no longer cost them again).

fireland 6y ago
A hashpower majority is not needed. For the latter, if a single digit percentage of the hashpower decides to enforce the ban, other miners in the network have an economic incentive to join the ban as well. The reasoning is explained here https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2020/11/12/how-could-regulators-successfully-introduce-bitcoin-censorship-and-other-dystopias/ https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2020/11/12/how-could-regu... In short, if a miner chooses to include banned transactions in its block, it means that block cannot be built off of by fully regulatory compliant miners. Fully compliant miners will be still building off the previous block in the chain. If fully compliant miners win the hash race and mine the next 2 blocks, the original miner's block will not be part of the longest chain, and they will lose all their block reward.
- TearsInTheRain 6y ago
  Who gets to determine which addresses are "poisoned"? China? The US? I have to imagine the ideologues in the bitcoin community will fight back against that. Also, not being censorable is a big part of bitcoin's value prop so this type of regulation would likely crash the price as well.
  - ajkdhcb2 6y ago
    If different countries had different ban lists then it would still censor the BTC that are included in enough lists As BTC continues to grow, the 'bitcoin community' changes in character; it's already fallen far from the cypherpunk anti-censorship / privacy roots
ajkdhcb2 6y ago
Of course they can't start orphaning blocks yet, but they can once it is more popular. It wouldnt take much government pressure, obviously governments will want to stop people from processing illegal transactions, and miners won't care

by tromp 6y ago

fireland 6y ago

A hashpower majority is not needed. For the latter, if a single digit percentage of the hashpower decides to enforce the ban, other miners in the network have an economic incentive to join the ban as well. The reasoning is explained here https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2020/11/12/how-could-regulators-successfully-introduce-bitcoin-censorship-and-other-dystopias/ https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2020/11/12/how-could-regu... In short, if a miner chooses to include banned transactions in its block, it means that block cannot be built off of by fully regulatory compliant miners. Fully compliant miners will be still building off the previous block in the chain. If fully compliant miners win the hash race and mine the next 2 blocks, the original miner's block will not be part of the longest chain, and they will lose all their block reward.

TearsInTheRain 6y ago
Who gets to determine which addresses are "poisoned"? China? The US? I have to imagine the ideologues in the bitcoin community will fight back against that. Also, not being censorable is a big part of bitcoin's value prop so this type of regulation would likely crash the price as well.
- ajkdhcb2 6y ago
  If different countries had different ban lists then it would still censor the BTC that are included in enough lists As BTC continues to grow, the 'bitcoin community' changes in character; it's already fallen far from the cypherpunk anti-censorship / privacy roots

ajkdhcb2 6y ago

Of course they can't start orphaning blocks yet, but they can once it is more popular. It wouldnt take much government pressure, obviously governments will want to stop people from processing illegal transactions, and miners won't care